What Will Get You to the Rich List?

Despite crises, scandals, and catastrophic drawdowns, the hedge fund Titans top the Rich List year after year . . . because they know how to sell.

Early in my career, I believed you could sell a fund based on returns alone. Returns are everything in this business. Later I realized if you sold solely based on returns, when the returns sour, so do the investors on your strategy. How you frame the story convinces investors to buy and hold through drawdowns.

The 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers pocketed a record-setting $36.6+ billion in 2025. Most believe the names on the Institutional Investor’s 25th Annual Rich List got there by generating the best returns. Returns matter, but so does raising assets.

Look at how they built their firms and a different picture emerges. Despite crises, drawdowns, scandals, and structural reinvention, assets continued to grow. AUM, the capital managed by investors, drives wealth in this industry as much or perhaps more than returns do. Returns matter but you cannot accumulate AUM without salesmanship.

You have to learn to sell, plain and simple.

The titans of the Rich List - Griffin, Cohen, Hohn, Ackman . . . every one of them faced a moment that should have finished their firms. None of them folded.

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